Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Reconceptualizing children's suggestibility: bidirectional and temporal properties.

Livia L Gilstrap1, Stephen J Ceci

  • 1Department of Psychology, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, CO 80933-7150, USA. gilstrap@uccs.edu

Child Development
|February 8, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Child suggestibility in interviews is complex. While leading questions didn't generally increase acquiescence, specific inaccurate misleading questions did. Child behavior can predict subsequent child behavior, challenging adult-driven suggestibility models.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Analyzing the Successful Incompetent to Be Executed Cases in the United States: A First Pass.

Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland)·2025
Same author

Adversarial collaboration: An undervalued approach in behavioral science.

The American psychologist·2024
Same author

Normative developmental vs. reverse developmental trends in memory distortion: a framework to investigate the impact of internal and external influences on memory and their relevance to legal decisions.

Frontiers in psychology·2023
Same author

Exploring Gender Bias in Six Key Domains of Academic Science: An Adversarial Collaboration.

Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society·2023
Same author

Lie for Me: Developmental Trends in Acquiescing to a Blatantly False Statement.

Frontiers in psychology·2021
Same author

Analyzing the scientific foundation of Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome: A reply to Lyon et al.

Behavioral sciences & the law·2020

Area of Science:

  • Child Psychology
  • Forensic Interviewing
  • Developmental Psychology

Background:

  • Previous research suggested leading questions increase child acquiescence.
  • Understanding factors influencing children's suggestibility is crucial for accurate testimony.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between interviewer behavior and child suggestibility.
  • To examine the predictive power of child behavior on subsequent responses.

Main Methods:

  • Forty-one children (3-7 years) were interviewed after a staged event.
  • Interviews were meticulously coded for adult (leading vs. neutral questions) and child behaviors (acquiescence vs. denial).
  • Lagged sequential analyses were employed to examine temporal relationships between behaviors.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Overall, leading questions did not significantly increase child acquiescence.
  • Inaccurate misleading questions were, however, followed by acquiescence.
  • Child behavior was found to predict subsequent child behavior, bypassing adult interviewer influence.

Conclusions:

  • The findings challenge the notion that suggestibility is solely driven by adult interviewer actions.
  • Child-to-child behavioral prediction suggests internal child factors play a significant role in suggestibility.
  • Further research is needed to refine models of child suggestibility.